These are excerpts from an article written by Jennie Jones Giles for the Hendersonville Times-News:

As a child, George Bond Jr. saw first-hand the lack of medical care in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, where country doctors worked 18- to 20-hour days, seven days a week. As an adult, Bond directed and participated in changes that brought the region into the 21st century.
Bond, former director of the Henderson County Health Department, retired as director of the Buncombe County Health Department.

 Country doc

Dr. George Bond Sr. arrived in the Hickory Nut Gorge area in 1947, driving an Army surplus jeep and carrying his medical bag, to give medical care to a community without a doctor.
“He had promised the people in Bat Cave he’d come back and be their doctor,” his son said. “The people of Bat Cave provided him housing.”
It was a log cabin, adjacent to the actual cave for which the community is named.
Bond’s father began working long hours driving and walking to the isolated homesteads. The opportunity to set up a clinic arrived when an old school was to be auctioned.
“The community bought the old school and converted it into a 12-bed hospital,” Bond said. “Back then, if you lived in the Bat Cave area or Polk County, you just didn’t get to Hendersonville.”
The old Patton Hospital was located in the Hyman Heights area of Hendersonville. But with poor transportation on winding mountain roads, many people could not get there.
In the early 1950s, Bond’s father was drafted and joined the Navy, soon becoming a submarine medical officer.
“He became the world’s leading authority on undersea living and saturation diving,” Bond said.
Now living in Connecticut and other locations, following along and watching his father’s career, Bond met Jacques Costeau, the famous undersea diver and explorer, and heard first-hand about the research his father was conducting on Sea Lab I and with hyperbaric chambers.
“He was just an old country doctor who became a pioneer in undersea living,” Bond said.
Almost every summer, the young son returned to the mountains, where he worked summer jobs. The family kept a home in the Hickory Nut Gorge region.
“Dad was not only a scientist, he wrote poetry and quoted poets all day,” Bond said. “He learned to sing the mountain ballads.”
His son chose English as a major at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and later followed his father into the Navy.

Public health

After four years as a hospital corpsman and dental technician with the Navy, the younger Bond got his first experience in public health with the Durham Health Department, helping with air pollution control work.
Using the GI Bill, Bond returned to UNC, earning a master’s degree in the School of Public Health in its second graduating class. Of the 30 graduates, he is one of the last to retire.
As luck would have it, Henderson County was searching for a public health director. In 1974, Bond got his chance to return to the mountains where he grew up.
“I spent 13 wonderful years here,” Bond said from his home atop a mountain near Mountain Home, overlooking the forests, mountains and communities of the county. “Thomas Wolfe said you can’t come home again. I’m living proof you can come home again.”
Bond oversaw the reorganization of the health department and the construction of a new building on U.S. 176, the location of the health department until the recent move into the new Human Services Building.
He also oversaw the building of the county’s first landfill.
“The county had an open dump where people threw their garbage,” he said. “People would take garbage and leave with some. It was never covered.”
Rats, vermin and animals wandered at will.
Bond praised the group of county commissioners who helped him build a sanitary landfill, men such as Ed Todd, Herb Justus and Billy Francis.
“I also take great pride in the wonderful home health program,” he said. “I worked with Pardee in a partnership to move home health care from the health department to Pardee. If the program had remained at the health department, it would not have been able to grow to meet the demands of the community.”
By 1987, Bond said he ran out of steam and made a career change, becoming a building contractor. As a president of the county’s Homebuilders Association, he helped to write the first Planned Unit Development Ordinance for the city. Later, he took a job with Aaron Enterprises, a company that owned and operated retirement communities.
Later, he returned to public service as director of the Buncombe County Health Department.